hosting this conference from washington, d.c. this is live coverage on c-span 3. >> an overwhelming response we got when we announced this event. it's unprecedented and i'm sure

we'll have a stimulating and exciting discussion this afternoon. pakistan, of course, remains in the limelight, has been for much of the last decade, and the fact that pakistan's stability is synonymous with that of south asia and perhaps also global security is almost cliched by now. and i think there is no denying the fact that whenever direction pakistan takes has implications for that region and definitely for u.s. policy going forward as well. but what is interesting and what got us thinking about hosting this event that if you really think about it there is not much about the future of pakistan that is being discussed, at least not the medium and long-term future. much of what preoccupies us is the here and now, the daily developments. you know, we pick up the newspaper and see oh, is pakistan still there or not, and that's not unimportant, but i think it takes away from this

idea of going into the future and seeing just what opportunities pakistan has and what pitfalls it needs to avoid for better and more informed policy making, both in the u.s. and in pakistan itself. but today i think much of the focus is microscopic, this overwhelming sense that we need to get pakistan to deliver on the security front, i think what it does it -- it in some ways keeps us devoid of discussing the complexity and the nuances of this country which are really ones to be studied, if you want to see where pakistan is headed in the medium to long term, and, of course, as i said, i think better knowledge on the factors that are going to drive pakistan in one direction versus the other are really required for more information policy-making. today's event builds on this idea and it flows out of a

recently concluded project by the brookings institution, dr. steven cohen, who is also my partner in crime in hosting this event today, led this project on the future of pakistan. and what came out of that was a collection of scholarly essays called the bellagio papers, and i believe you have a handout outside, a brief rundown on this project. the project really looked at this idea of where pakistan is headed and what kind of variables we need to worry about as we look into the future. the project involved conducting research and economic activities on pakistan, but once we had the findings from the project, steve and i got talking about the subject a bit more, and we thought that there was a need to initiate or systematic research-driven debate on the medium to long-term future of

pakistan, and that's what has brought us here today. we're going to cover three aspects through the afternoon. the first panel is going to look at the variables and factors which will be key in determining what direction pakistan take. the second one, panelists will talk about various potential futures of pakistan, and the third one will hone in on the policy implications, both for the u.s. as well as for pakistan itself. we're very fortunate to have an eminent and distinguished set of speakers here today. pakistanis as well as american, and both practitioners who spent a long time dealing with pakistan in various capacities as well as economic experts who studied this country for years. there's a copy of the agenda, the bios of the speakers outside but very briefly we are going to have three panels, each will run for a total of 75 minutes, an

hour and 15 minutes. the speakers will speak for ten minutes each which should leave us a good half an hour or more for a q&a after every panel, and this is a deliberate choice because we want to make this as inactive as possible. and i'll seek the indulgence of the chairs to ensure that that happens. finally before i invite steve to come and talk briefly about the bellagio project, let me also take this opportunity to thank our team which has worked to make this event possible. i, for one, actually had very little clue of what was happening. i'm just standing taking the credit here but stephanie flammenbalm, megan from our staff and concertino xavier at brookings, the public affairs team of brookings and u sip, our events management team here as well as the i.t. folks who are making sure that this event is going live on the web, and many

us who are not visible but did work to make this happen over the past few weeks. once again, thanks for joining us, and we look forward to very interesting afternoon. steve. >> thank you. this project had its origins in the year or two after i finished my book on the idea of pakistan, and i watched developments in pakistan carefully. i wanted to see whether the prediction in chapter 8 of that book were coming to what path pakistan was taking, and it -- and as the years went by i realized that many of the warning lights that i had pointed out, many of the warning indicators, were burnt out under the musharraf years. things had gotten from perhaps bad to worse, so i thought pakistan deserves a second look, and this time i thought i would try a methodology which was not another book as such but a

tri-partied methodology and some of the foundations were able to help us with this, so this project consisted of three things. the first is a review of past predictions of pakistan and that's contained in the appendix of my own paper, in the back of my own paper, where i look, nic, national intel council, predictions by individuals and others. the second one was my own paper which is available outside, about a 60, 70-page essay about the future of pakistan, and the third, of course, were the bellagio papers, i hope the rockefeller foundation doesn't mind us using their name, but it was a marvelous setting for an interesting and painful discussion, and as you know from the participants i chose people who were academics, practitioners and think-tankers. i wanted to get a variety of people, young, old, and people who had studied different aspects of pakistan, and i set the agenda for the meeting. it was that i asked each of them to write a short paper, no more

than 10, 15 pages, looking ahead, and first i wanted them to write what the factors and variables were which they thought might shape pakistan's future and by future i meant the next five to seven years, medium term, and secondly i wanted them to outline as best they could what that -- that what those futures would look like. what are the most likely futures, least likely futures and i followed the same approach in my own paper which you have the results before you. there's no project conclusion, we're near optimist or pessimists in a sense. we try to analyze the events and the developments in pakistan as we see them. i was asked to do a summary, i thought we don't need a summary because i can't speak on behalf of the project of the paper-writers. i can only speak on behalf of myself. but clearly, you know, this is a country where there's a lot of pessimism and i used to use the phrase -- i used, to you know, i quoted george shultz who i used to work for when i was in planning planning.

he told me once that hope is not a policy, and that was one of my guiding stars, but then a pakistani diplomat said despair is not a policy either so somewhere tanweer hope and despair there's reality, we're not quite sure where it's at and the different paper-writers came out differently. i thought when we organized this meeting we would not only have some of the paper-writers who were at bellagio and in each panel sprinkled with them and also bring in new people, yusuf among others to talk about and wendy chamberlain to talk about how they see the future of pakistan. let me stop there and, again, turn this meeting back over to -- to, yeah -- also, i think it's my task to remind everybody, as you leave this meeting, please turn on your cell phones. moeed, thank you. >> thanks. >> i guess they are supposed to be off right now, huh?

let me introduce ambassador wendy chamberlain who is going to chair the first session which looks at the impacts and variables that are going to be critical as pakistan moves forward. ambassador chamberlain is the president of the middle east institute, a career american diplomat. she served as u.s. ambassador at various places, including to pakistan in 2001-2002 which, as all of you know, was really being in the hot seat. she also served on the boards of several groups, including the american academy for did i ploimsy, the holings center, global heritage foundation, search for common ground, among others. we have detailed bios outside so we keep the bios and the introductions very short, but over to you, ambassador. thanks. >> well, thank you very much, and i'd like to say that it's my great pleasure to in turn introduce three very distinguished young people who

have extraordinary insights into pakistan, who will talk about the factors that will determine and shape pakistan's future. first, ambassador bill mileiam, please join me at the able. ambassador milam also had a long and distinguished career in the state department. he preceded me as ambassador to absand left in 2001, but bill has remained very active in all things pakistan and is currently a scholar at the woodrow willison center. joshua white, joshua is a research fellow at the institute for global engagement, and he often speaks and writes on islamic politics and the political stability in south asia, including pakistan. joshua lipton peshawar from 2005 and 2006, he makes frequent trips back to pakistan for

ground-truthing. huma yusuf is currently a scholar at the woodrow wilson center. she's a journalist for pakistan's leading english language paper, "the dawn" and she often writes for other important newspapers like the "globe" and why the indian express." huma is a graduate of m.i.t. in harvard and writes on the social issues in pakistan that can get some people in trouble, human rights, honor killings, gang wars. her courage in her reporting has won her a number of awards, including the unesco and pakistan press foundation award for gender and journalism in 2005 and the ec's human rights in journalism in 2006. bill, over to you. >> oh, gee. >> ten minutes. >> well, thank you, first of

all, for the young in your introduction. that i must say was unexpected, but very gratefully received. and the second thing i want to point out to those of you and to the audience in general is that the last time i discussed this -- this issue of the future of pakistan in a group like this was in bellagio, and i have to say that the setting is somewhat different. it's a bleak subject, but at least at bellagio every time you looked up you've got a beautiful picture postcard view out your window. here, not much. now, my job is to talk about, i understand, external variables. they call them factors. i like to call them variables, and their likely impact. well, i asked myself likely impact on what, on pakistan? yes, in a general sense, but i think we have to think about

their impact on certain of the other factors that have things to do with the future of pakistan, so i picked out of the list i have in my paper, let's see, four really. one, my favorite bugaboo which is what i call india's centuriesity. two, which goes along with india's centristity is the evolution of the pakistani army. three, i think something that has become even more apparent to us in the last few weeks, in the not just the assassination of the governor of punjab salman tasir, more importantly the ugly aftermath to that, and that is what i call the islamist narrative and in particular its -- its seeping into the pores of pakistani society. and last, not necessarily least,

the economy which i think is going to be very important in the short run. now, i got to move fast. i'll start with the international economy which is an external factor. this is going to put great pressure on pakistan in the next few years. certainly this year food and energy prices are rising. they will probably continue to rise. this puts inflationary pressures into -- into the economy, no matter how you look at it. whether the food prices go up because they pass through or because the government subsidizes them and prints money which also creates inflation. this will be more of a short-term factor, but i think the economy and i hope josh will say something about it on the internal side, is one of the most important things that we're going to be looking at and worrying about in the next few

months. the rest of my external factors are basically countries. china, china is a spoiler. it's an easy fallback for pakistan whenever they hear something they don't like from somebody else. they can turn to china. china gives a lot of trade and aid. probably china sees pakistan as a way to keep pressure on india which is its great rival in asia, and it looks to me as if china is -- would be working against the normalization of relations with india, with the pakistanis, and it certainly is not a great fan of democratization either. china also is providing probably a very large part of the foreign investment that pakistan receives these days and that is going to be important to pakistan, and china doesn't appear to be able to change its

ways but perhaps if it saw something pakistan doing which really threatened its interests, it would, but i see -- i don't see a great deal of chance of that. india is the major paradox. it seems to sit on the side and wait and be content to wait for something to happen in pakistan, particularly for pakistan to fall apart. i think it's very ambivalent on normalization of relations with pakistan, and my wonder about india is whether this is a conscious strategy or whether this is just an inability of a fractious democracy to make up its mind, but i -- i think india is one of the two major sources, if there is one, of what i would call a black swan event, some sort of war or other dustup that causes great turmoil in pakistan

and perhaps accelerates the process of its -- of its deterioration if it's going to deteriorate. afghanistan, afghanistan is to my mind an important cog, and i say this in my paper because i think the outcome of the -- of what i think to be an -- an inevitable political solution there is key to what happens in pakistan. it could strengthen the army. it could strengthen its indian centricity, it could, a very actually give india and pakistan a chance to work together. i'm okay, thank you. and learn how they could get along before they actually get around to normalizing regularly. finally, the united states. i think probably the united states is an external factor is the most benign of the external

factors or external variables. nonetheless, i have besign as a rather neutral meaning. i'm not sure that we have a great deal of influence or leverage these days. our large assistance, if it starts to flow, will be of great help in this time of need. pakistan is becoming more aid dependent all the time, i think. we have, i believe, finally a well-conceived strategy for trying to move forward with our relationship. but no one yet believes it. and certainly not in pakistan. and i'm not sure anyone -- too many people in washington believe it yet. in fact, i believe that part of our problem with pakistan is that there is an enormous division in the -- within the administration as to what the policy should be. and we keep talking out of both sides of our mouth, particularly

about afghanistan, you'll notice that the president, again, talked about july 11th, 2000 -- july 2011, as the beginning of the drawdown in pakistan. they tried to move that to 2014 but that doesn't seem to have penetrated. and it would be very unlikely, i think, that many pakistanis don't believe we're going to cut and run again. finally, this is the second course source of black swan possibility, some sort of real thing that happens in the united states, that would create a public clamor for some stronger action against pakistan right now. i think i probably used up my ten minutes. >> yeah. thank you very much. if i could ask the other two speakers to speak from the podium for our cameras in the back. josh? thank you.

>> thank you. it's good to be here today. huma and i were given the unenviable task of having to talk about domestic factors that will impact pakistan's future in about ten minutes. so the only thing i can promise here is that this will be thoroughly unsatisfying. but i wanted to touch on a couple. first i wanted to talk a little bit about the economy, which bill mentioned, but from more of an indodge news point of view, and the second to talk about the role of political islam and a few things that we might want to consider there. to put on the table for our discussion. the economy, if you've been reading the news, you'll know that it is -- it's pretty grim right now. the good news is that pakistan is not on the brink of a balance of payments crisis and we can all smile about that. might be one of the only happy things we hear this afternoon. the bad news is that pakistan is close to a fiscal crisis.

and you only have to read the headlines in pakistan to know that when pakistan is facing a fiscal crunch, it's very clear what sort of things that they cut. they cut development. they cut flood relief. they cut cash transfers to the poor. they cut education. they cut a lot of the things that will be important for any of the mildly rosy to happy long-term futures that we're going to be talking about here today. so, over the short-term, this looks like questions surrounding this pakistan going to actually implement or reform general sales tax or some other tax regime, is pakistan going to increase the number of people that pay taxes from about 3 million, out of 175 million, to a more respectable number? all those are short-term questions that will have an impact over the next few months. but as way look to the mid and long-term i think there are a few things to consider. the first is that we might posit

that as long as the united states and pakistan are on a relatively good footing that it's likely that pakistan will keep finding a way to clear the very minimum necessary to keep the international financial institutions engaged with pakistan. it's shown a remarkable ability, as others have mentioned, to negotiate from a position of weakness. to tell the united states, and the international community, that times are desperate but if pakistan goes under it's going to hurt everybody. so i would expect it's likely that it will be able to continue in that vein and then i think the real question over the five to seven year time frame that we're looking at is whether pakistan can address some of the structural problems in its economy. and a lot of these, as i thought about them, are so integrally related to the political economy of pakz. the fact that from the beginning of 1947, landholders have had a very prominent role in parliament. and have thwarted every attempt to institute meaningful

agriculture tax. that industrialists have done similar job trying to thwart any rollback of everything subsidies of any kind, and then you have a military that essentially sets its budget independently, and lets all the other branches of government sort of fight for the scraps. so these are political economy questions. and i think that particularly in a fiscal crisis, all of the political incentives become perverse. so if you, for example, have looked at the pmln's ten points for their economic agenda you'll see that the first one is to roll back this terrible cut in energy subsidies and the fourth one is to control inflation. as if these two things are totally different, and there's no recognition that pakistan has just been monetizing its fiscal deficit. put all this on the table and i think we're left with a question, which is what could happen to this political thesis in the economic sector? there's a really interesting and voluminous literature on how economic reform happens. and there's one school of

thought which says you have to basically hit a crisis for real economic reform to happen. that's the most likely way for economic reform to happen. and in that vein it's interesting to see that some of pakistan's most deep-pocketed allies, the united states, saudi arabia, and china have seemed increasingly wary of supporting pakistan financially. and so that might lead one to think that there's a likelihood that some kind of crisis could be a catalyst. on the other hand a fiscal crisis is a much, in my view, a much less likely kind of crisis than a balance of payments crisis to bring in outside kind of fresh yours. because the international community is likely to go to pakistan and say you have twelve different ways of putting your house in order as opposed to a balance of payments crisis where a country is left with very few options. there is, however, another argument which says that economic reform can best be carried out in an environment of distraction. and there's an argument that's been made, and we could debate

it, but an argument about india's reforms in the '90s. and that india was able to implement a lot of its reforms in the '90s, as opposed to when it tried in the '80s because of the massive public emfastist on communal conflict. the argument has been made that a country that is distracted makes it easier for a small elite to move economic reform forward. that might be something for our conversation as it intersects with the political issues, and i think what we see in this respect is that there's very likely a tradeoff. we see around the world, between a more democratic and open process of economic reform that is somewhat, perhaps less effective. and a more technocratic process, which has all the problems of being closed. but that can be more effective in the short-term of doing painful things like implementing austerity measures. so, i know that's very unsatisfying but i wated to put that on the table for our discussion of the economic future in the next five or ten

years. the second issue that i wanted to talk about and just put on the table is the role of political islam. and there are a couple of frames of reference that people use in talking about political islam and pakistan that i think are particularly unhelpful. the first is the perennial question will islamists take over the state? and i think it's unhelpful because, first of all political islamist parties don't do very well at the polls. they get at most 10% to 15% of the vote. second, they don't have very much capacity to govern a bureaucratic state. and i was living in peshawar when the mma islamist alliance was trying to govern the northwest frontier province. and it was -- it was sad, and comical, and only every once in awhile hopeful to see the islamist parties try to actually do education, and water delivery and all the things that governments have to do. third, i think that even when

people talk about no longer hypothetical cases of taliban 60 miles from islamabad, and advancing on the capital, one has to ask the very serious question, what on earth are they going to do when they get there? and this is a very real question, within a state that has a very large army, has proven to be quite resilient, what are some taliban from balacan going to do when they walk down the central streets of islamabad? i think that hasn't been thought through, and it's led to a lot of speculation. that is frankly not very helpful. and the fourth, that the military obviously sees political parties, islamist parties, and islamist militant groups as some kind of force multiplier. but only to a point. we've seen in the last couple of years that the military establishment recognizes that these groups are useful but only in a limited way. and to this i would say a much more interesting question for us to bat around has to do with state incentives for supporting

islamic politics, or for supporting islamist militancy. and even my fiercely nationalist pakistani friends will now mostly admit that 9 government of pakistan has a long and glorious history of doing this, and there's debate over to what extent the government has rolled back some of its support for various islamist groups. this obviously depends on what bill was talking about with pakistan's threat perception of the region. it also, i think there's also a level of momentum or passive penance that comes with supporting these kind of militant groups. but all this is to say, religious radicalism is not simply organic to pakistan. or to pakistani society. it's been supported and cultivated, and i think that some of the great survey work shows the ways in which, at least on the demand side for militancy, the government's perspective, and the government's agenda actually has quite a significant role in shaping people's preferences, and their views.

i'll end with one other question that i think is particularly not helpful in talking about the future of political islam in pakistan. and that is will, quote, moderate islam triumph over quote radical islam? this has been a question that i think maybe has some very, you know, large-scale relevance on some level. but particularly in the wake of the assassination and a number of other events, i think that these categories have been rendered obsolete. there is a view that it's a liberal who are holding down the fort against the radicals, and it's true, of course, that a lot of people are more liberal on a number of social and cultural issues but it's also true that the man who killed the governor was inspired by radicals and it doesn't take very much to look beneath the surface at the theology behind this and

realize -- are liberal on a whole number of issues but have a very high view of the prophet. and all of this is to say we also saw a number involved in the lawyers movement celebrating the killing of the governor and i think that these are very uncomfortable facts but they should not have been tremendously surprising. because we set up categories of moderate and radicals and i think all of us wandering around pakistan for the past few years see that those categories are inadequa inadequate. and you may find that some do very well in a georgetown interfaith panel, but at the end of the day, there are issues on which they do things that shock us at being il liberal from our optic. and i would suggest that the real question is not are the moderates going to try and take over the liberals. but the question, what is the discourse on and what is the government response to those

groups across the board that engage in what i call ving ranly islamism. that is groups that decide that it is legitimate to do what the state will not do. if i believe that this kind of sharia law needs to be carried out. this is a much more interesting question. because it cuts across the divide within sunni islam. it cuts across the divide between main stream and islamist parties. you'll find people in the most liberal parties in pakistan who are debating this very question whether it's legitimate. and finally, it cuts across the class lines, and the regional lines, as well. so i will wrap up with that. and all of that to say i think that we get our questions right when we look at islam and the future of islam is important and this last question i mentioned is perhaps a single question that points us to how political islam is going to be used and

expressed, and also how resilient the state, in its legitimacy is going to be in the eyes of of the public. >> thank you, josh. >> thank you for having me here. i want to talk a little bit about social and development factors which i believe are going to influence pakistan's future. i'm going to start with the demographic time bomb. pakistan's population is still growing at a 2% rate according to the u.n.'s midrange projections. that means not worst case scenario. the population will be 335 million people in 2015. this population is a very young population. median age right now is 21. two-thirds of all pakistanis are under the age of 30, and in the 15 to 24 age bracket is expected

to swell by over 20%. so ensure that the 18 million to 19 million pakistanis who are under the age of 20 find employment in the next two deck as, the gdp growth has to stand at about 9%. you already heard dismal projections and irs expected to be at about 2% in the coming months. in other words over the next three decades it seems highly unlikely that pakistan would be able to put most of its young population to work. only 1 million jobs are being created each year. though by twenty thirty pakistan is expected to have 175 million projected workers. this population boom will also translate into intense resource scarcity. by 2025 pakistan is expected to be a water-scarce country. this being problematic even though 55 million pakistanis already lack safe drinking water. irrigation factors continue to be wasteful and remains to see how the floods last summer will proceed to address this issue.

and the situation has become dire enough the pakistani army has taken note of the water shortages as a serious security concern. since 90% of pakistan's water goes go to agriculture, there will be food insecurity. already we have 77 million pakistani's going hungry. now it has been widely documented that chronically unemployed, poor people become prime targets for extremist recruitment. pakistani analysts have been describing this trend of extremist organizational trends using social justice and recruitment as the strengthening of a marxist nexus. and we've already seen versions of this occur in 2009 during the taliban takeover, one of the first things they did was seize elite land possessions and promise to redistribute them among the poor. so in short, what i'm trying to get at is that these development indicators, if not addressed,

could lead to a sharper rise in extremism and militant recruitment. depending on whether or not strong action is taken, and economic reforms are implemented, this trend will be facilitated or offset by the fact that pakistan is also expected to see rapid organization in coming decades. by the 2020s, 50% of all pakistanis would live in cities. and in 2025 the number of pakistanis with a population of up to 1 million people will have doubled from today. now, rapid organization of force poses its own social and security implications. we can talk about those more in the q&a session but i do think we should consider, for example, ethnic and political violence in karachi, which has mostly not only -- but also business interests, ran mark, drug trafficking, and things like that. now, to sort of shift a little bit towards joshua's comments

iout political >> i agree with them if the extremists are not going to comt and followed religious ideas.oi i also agree with them thed wont distinctions between moderate and extremist islam areee with t artificial but i do believe we an overall rightward shift in the pakistani ideologye across aussie -- socioeconomic.t what right has considered extremist rhetoric. i believe there are a variety of factors.toric. the first is a simple probabilities in numbers game. there's such a variety currently operating in pakistan, both foreign and local that provide this marketplace with an array of ideological options whether they are in u.s. and india andt shia, and minority at a very u.s good reason of. affiliation wit, pakistan. so a young person or simply

talin.cally unemployed who is vulnerable will easily be ablepa to find groups that have aationi similar ideology positioning and to offer some sort of nuance. with 20 million internet subscribers and 100 million connections in pakistan the ability to inject these different groups is increasing. the initial point is increasing. there's also the fact that i'm sure we'll get to the state ofct suucation. i think many of the people inre this room know the pakistan has sort of a schizophrenic system with our three distinct groups in the public, private ande religious group. all of are these systems produch different worldviews. what is worth noting is each of these as currently got in place the kind of curriculum that does promote islam, islamic values, islamic ideas. in place the

kind of curriculum that does promote islam, islamic values, islamic society and pushing for this idea of pakistan, or islam isn't under threat and to have using the idea that islam will be sort of the solution of many of the country's problems. and i do sort of wonder why the situation where in the future we find that the one thing of the products of these three very different school systems have in common is the sense of being persecuted, either in the muslim world, the pakistani and one that sort of can be both exploited by extremist organizations but more likely to sort of come to form, sort of public narrative, and conversations in the public, too. finally there's also the role being played by pakistan's recently advertising media. mostly televisions and radio stations. in less than a decade we've gone from having two to 90 television channels. 30 of those are dedicated to news.

since the standoff in islamabad in 2007, these channels have been increasingly willing and offering to broadcast the views of radical extremist organizations. there's been much mention of the aftermath of the assassination and many in pakistan are beginning to blame the media for promoting some of that support for the assassin. clerics who supported his actions were given air time, they were interviewed extensively, both before and after the event. and you also see the media sort of in an effort to boost ratings, engaging populist sentiment, fanning anti-americanism, spreading conspiracy theories and exacerbating these fields of external enemies. i can also imagine in case some of the scenarios bill touched on black swan with either the u.s. or india we can certainly expect the media to disseminate --

>> and one final point i make we should acknowledge the changing nature of pakistani politics. i think as we debated -- military dictatorship or whether civilian governance is finally going to have a bit of a chance given that the army does not for once have a government in waiting and also because no one wants to take the job right now, which we've seen in the last couple of weeks. but we are moving to a situation where we're going to have a more decentralized government, thanks to the -- has pros and cons and we can talk about it later. i do expect we'll see a rise in religious parties, there's already been a call sort of reiterated by pakistan yesterday for more provinces to be created. we're going to see an increase in coalition politics and these i argue will be more factionalized, more competitive, and i expect to actually see the consolidation of all trends of dynastic politics and the

continuing culture of political patronage. this has already been touched on already but i do believe without -- that as people struggle more to stay in power for longer, there will be a lack of long-term strategizing, a sense of a willingness to implement difficult reforms, and implement some of the policies that are required to address the development of social problems. and i will wrap up there and i'm looking forward to the discussion. >> thank you huma. thank you to bill and josh. i think a very comprehensive discussion. you've touched on so many issues. my job was really to be the mopup person at the end, and touch on some of the issues that were not addressed. but i think we did a fairly good job in touching most of the most important issues. i might just as one that i don't think was mentioned, and that

w was -- some nods from the audience. huma did point out the demographics but in terms of numbers. but the democrgraphics in termsf the youth bulge. you see different statistics. sometimes it's 60% under 30rks sometimes 75% of the population under 30. half of them men. many of them young men, teenagers, young adults, when i talk about sex, i'm really talking about hormones. all of that testosterone makes for a population that is restive. that is -- and no, i'm not picking on pakistan. those of you in the audience who are in my generation of the baby boomers, remember the '60s and the '70s. we were a pretty obstreperous group ourselves. our icons were the -- not our icons, bob kennedy, john

kennedy, john lennon, our groups were the weather men and sds, cities burned in the united states. it was a violent period. and i don't think we can discount that the nature of the population leaves for a very active population. that is a factor or variable that one must consider when one looks at pakistan's future. a second point i think was that i thought of to speak to you i think was very well covered. and that is the political islam. but i couch it a little bit differently. in terms of the civil war going on in pakistan over values. the values of the idea of pakistan is built as steve wrote in his book, the vision of pakistan as a secular, democratic, nation. constitution, largely laws that had their roots in the british

system, is now being challenged, and several of the speakers mentioned the assassination of salman tasseer that certainly revealed the conflict of values in pakistan. the conflict of whether it is a government's responsibility to provide for its poor. whether it's the security agency's responsibility to provide for security for all people, evidently not for minorities. which is one of the ugly truths that we saw with the assassination of salman taseer. and the economic issues that we discussed. pointing out as economic issues get worse, it's the poor, it's the investments in the population, that get shortchanged. and this -- these -- this addresses, i would call, a civil

war values in pakistan. and that will certainly be an important element that's going to shape its future. my final point before we open up for discussion, and i don't think this was emphasized enough, that is the demonization of the united states. we certainly see ourselves as a very good friend of pakistan. yet, yet you have a government that we're close to, an army that we're close to in terms of institutions, but as a society that has almost declared war against the united states. popular resentment towards the united states has -- is eroding the very common ground that we would like to plant our feet. it makes it difficult for our humanitarian workers to distribute this, now that we finally have it, developmental assistance, passed by the congress. it makes it dangerous for american diplomats in cities. we've had this tragic event in

lahore. and it makes -- and to that i'd like to say it makes it difficult for us to resolve our diplomatic problems. you had 40,000 people in the streets in lahore on sunday burning effigies of davis in the united states. this is going to be a veritable in what kind of pakistan emerges and what kind of relationship we're able to have. and i don't believe that anybody in the pakistan gocht or the united states government wants anything less but very good relations. but we're fighting some very powerful forces there that i think it's time that we talk about a little more openly when we talk about where our diplomatic relations are going in the future. and i hope we can do that very openly and candidly this afternoon. what i'd like to suggest, as we take questions, is that you -- we have cameras and we have

microphones so please wait until you're given the microphone before you give your question and if you could identify yourself that would be helpful to all of us. perhaps if you could just line up behind the microphones on both sides of the room. that will make it a lot easier for me in selecting who gets to speak first. trudy. i know i saw you. chris. you have to speak into the microphone. >> my name is chris. i have a couple of comments and questions. one what huma characterization of poverty, lack of education and so forth is driving this attraction toward militancy. the interesting thing is there's really just no evidence for that. jacob and my other colleagues have done a lot of polling on this. and we fully find, here's something that might be startling, it's actually the wealthier and the better

educated people that are most attracted to al qaeda, for example. and that makes sense, because they're generally the ones that are most familiar with it. so the problem with characterizing these factors is contributing to militancy is there's just no evidence for it and it may even promote the u.s. government to go down, i think, paths that are not terribly useful. so going back to this issue about salman taseer and i think josh's points that we have these categories that are utterly useless. i was there during the taseer assassination and friends of mine who are actually scholars are outraged about the blasphemy law because it's not consistent with islam. you have a country that claims to be a islamic state and the vast majority have no ability to read with comprehensive the koran. so when the u.s. is pursuing this anti-madrassa campaign maybe something else is needed.

maybe if pakistan wants to be an islamic state it has a requirement to make sure its citizens know what it means. and it's got to be so bad that even though they oppose the law because it's inconsistent with the koran are absolutely too afraid to say this for fear that their servants or other folks that might be in their environment wouldn't understand the nature of their critique. so i put that out there. we might want to reconsider what's actually driving this. >> thank you, chris. we would welcome others who would like to react to chris' comments to also join us at the microphones. next. >> my name is arnold zeitland and i opened the first associated press bureau in pakistan in 1969. and have been following pakistan affairs in various roles ever since. i've come back in china at the end of the 2009 and been in washington since then and there's one group, one interest group that i find ignored or

hardly ever mentioned, and i would like to read something to you and appreciate if you think it has any validity. what i'm talking about is the bureaucracy in pakistan. the statement i'd like to show you, like to read to you -- has any validity is the bureaucracy of pakistan is self-serving, dedicated to its survival, and continuation, using inept civilian and the government at the hubris of the military to make itself supreme. does that have any validity? that's my question. >> anybody on the panel? >> let me start by just responding to your comment. which is -- i actually agree with you.

-- join the militant organization. i was simply trying to point out that there's an increasing willingness amongst the extremist groups, not only to bring religious rhetoric to the table when they're trying to bring in new recruits, but also to come at it from the social justice angle. and so looking forward, assuming other factors like the one that joshua mentioned, where the government continues to support these groups, that they're able to work freely, that they're, you know, recruitment becomes more systematic and organized this could be a factor that would contribute to people joining those groups. and i think that if that sort of trajectory happens, what membership of an extremist organization looks like will be very different thing. it could be a much more casual, less violent thing. what i do think i was trying to get at, though, is that looking at it from the outside there is a rightward movement within pakistani society which doesn't mean that everyone's becoming a militant or a taliban foot soldier. it just means that there is this increased concern with islam,

what it does mean to be a muslim. so i don't fully agree with you that this conversation must be had in religious terms and one of the least productive things we can do is stick to secular versus militant. i think the u.s. in particular has to reconsider. i think this question has been coming up increasingly in the last few months in washington that are we ready to deal with the pakistan that is not the pakistan of the 1970s that is a much more religious pakistan and everyone is having a little -- when they're talking about the islamic republic. i think that is the new pakistan that everyone is engaging with. that's what i was trying to get at. there are nuances of much more in the middle. and that it's moving right. >> i think chris raised a terrific point. we often think about the public schools in pakistan as being secular. because that's our american model. but, pretty much anybody who goes to school in pakistan almost anywhere will study

islamiat which is a mix of islam and pakistan nationalism, and i take the point very well that i think that if we want, if pakistanis want to have a society in which young people can think about -- about what issues are actually in accordance with the koran, then they need some experience of it. and in that sense our efforts to promote things that are quote secular are often translated in pakistan as ladiniat which translates more or less as godless which doesn't go over very well to pakistan ears. the other thing i'm absolutely delighted, i've never received a question about the pakistani bureaucracy and i think that's just fantastic. the pakistan bureaucracy, i think, is a self-serving institution. all bureaucracies are, by definition, and i think that it has done a good job of surviving and you ask any pakistanis what they think of the bureaucracy and they'll have stories of

utterly corrupt bure crows, stories of incredibly competent, impressive bureaucratic officers, as well. and i've met the full spectrum. and i think you just look at the issue of the economy, those days the technical bureaucrats and the finance minimum city and else where, many of them are doing their darnedest to get the government to realize the problem. the problems that the country faces. and the fiscal solutions that are available. and so, at times bureaucrats do tremendously effective work and at times, of course, they've been part of the problem. i don't think that's different from almost anywhere else. in terms of their impact on the future of pakistan, i'm not sure that it would be a decisive factor. in many ways pakistan inherited and has kept many of the british ways of operating the bureaucracy. and we've seen them in some cases with natural disasters the bureaucracy has done a pretty decent job.

>> trudly rubin, the philadelphia inquirer. josh, you spoke about the real question being what is the government response to groups that engage in vigilante islamism, trying to create a new contract. i guess my question is given what huma has said about the increased religiosity and given what we saw in the aftermath of salman taseer's assassination, where do you see any groups, whether it is governmental, whether it is nongovernmental, whether it is high up in the military, or anywhere else in society that is willing to take on the issue of vigilante islamism publicly, if we mean by vigilante islamism the murder of shiites, the murder of christians, the assassination of

people who speak out, or even, even the question of a mumbai which general pash claims he didn't know about and claims quite voe self russly. don't know if it's true. but perhaps he didn't and others did but who in pakistani society is willing to take on any of that from the domestic even to the international at this point in time? >> and if i could add to that question, a very similar question that came from the overspill room, on vigilante islam, they ask, how does it play in to the narrative of political islam and what is their source of power? >> i think those are great questions and you're right to observe that there are not many people who will speak up in public against these kind of vigilante activities. but certainly there are some.

if you -- there are some members of political parties who will say, regardless of what you think, your interpretation of blasphemy, these are things that one can't do by one's own hand. in fact a lot of these debates are not happening in the public space. they're happening within political parties, they're happening within the military and in other places. and i know, i've talked to quite a few members of islamist political parties who are actually having these debates within their parties and have over the last several years. have these debates over the red mosque, having these debates over what just happened with governor taseer and their position is, well, of course we think that he committed bla blasphe blasphemy, but whose job is it to rectify that? and in fact, many of these islamist parties who we would think would be vociferously for people taking this into their own hands are actually afraid of the follow-on effects of society or a political environment in

which people take these things into their own hands. and in part, they're afraid of this because they're worried that other groups, other toll ban-like groups will begin to consider them to be political sellouts and will begin targeting them. so this doesn't often surface into the public debate. it does to some extent. some members of the military and some political parties will come out and say that we have to draw a line here. but within political parties, there's actually often quite a robust debate about not the ultimate objective but about the method by which -- by which this should be carried out. and you know, again, i've had senior clerics say to me, well, of course, if somebody steals his hand should be cut off. but, in fact, i can't just go cut off his hand. the government has to cut off his hand. now from one frame, the person who says i can't cut off his hand has a more moderate position. i'm not going to call him a moderate. but i am going to say that this is an important dividing line between those who say that the government has a role, and has a

necessary role, and those who take an anti-nomian kind of position. and that's an important debate to watch. especially as it bubbles up from within political parties and other groups. in inaudible ] >> is there then no influential power meaning government or military that has power to do something, that is willing to take this on? and if it's a silent, private debate, too fearful to come out in the open, then is there any mechanism to fight back against vigilante islamists? >> well, i think that it can come out -- >> could you repeat the question? >> the question was, is there any institution that has the strength to take this on? and i think, the will. it's a matter of political leadership, the military, you remember, the political parties can say regardless of what you think of somebody's stated

views, we have a legal mechanism in this country, we have civil law, we have islamic law. and things have to be followed in that manner. i think that's a matter of political will. and certainly the military is a strong institution. and the bureaucracy and others, i mean, i'd be frommed beyond this as well. i don't think it's a hopeless case. it comes down to political leadership and it's understandable why these issues don't bubble up into public discourse because people are understandably afraid of what will happenthis happens openly. although every once in awhile on the tv you see some pretty intense debates about blasphemy, about how the government should respond to the taliban, about the legitimacy of ad hoc kazi courts which are set up in the pakistani interlands. these things do come up as part of the public debate. it's not that they're not there. >> i would add two quick things. one i do believe that you can see some public version of this conversation in the media,

particularly after the assassination a lot of people noted this one religious cleric, highly well regarded but now in exile in fear for his life, he continued to appear in almost all pakistani television channels speaking out against the blasphemy law. he could do it because he was out of the country. but the fact that his voice was on air and everyone did hear that side of the story. and i think that there is a big movement, better media regulation in pakistan. if that kicks in you'd see more balanced debate. the other thing that i think that's interesting is that civil society organizations are becoming a bit savvier. they've realized that their sort of u.s. dollar funding has put a change on their work. they're realizing there's a steep learning curve, positing themselves as secular groups, as not being particularly useful, they're alienate being themselves from the people they're trying to help. what they're doing now is appealing to the independent judiciary. i think you increasingly see the society groups not to take to the street and do candle light

vigils and things but fighting motions in court. -- action against certain things. i agree with joshua. i think that as long as people start getting a better understanding of the bureaucracy of the system and pressurize it which they're learning to that in coming years we may see a few you know where the government is forced to take action according to the law. >> can i say something? >> sure. >> thank you. >> this question, strikes me, i've raised this before, is really sort of a general question of somehow the formation of a counternarrative to what i would call the islamist narrative. which would be, i think -- should be in the hands of the government. whichever government is in power. and supported by the military. and there's where i think, in you know, this should work its way through the schools and so forth. there's where i don't think i see much signs of progress in pakistan.

and i don't know exactly -- i mean, i thought the aftermath of the taseer thing, assassination, actually made me less confident that that's ever going to happen. as to the bureaucracy, i think the bureaucracy has changed some since the old days. i mean, it was much more sort of hand in glove with the military rulers of the time, as i recall. i wasn't there. but that's my reading of history. it's not -- i don't think that's so much the case anymore. however, and i agree with josh, particularly in some of the key ministries there are some really good technical economists, technical people who know what should be done. it's the political will to do it that is not there. >> thank you very much.

our broadcast, as i said i come from peshawar, and so many questions in my mind, but due to time restrictions, i understand i have to ask questions. my question is, in terms of what the islamists might be receiving in any parliamentary election just 10 to 15 person. -- in pakistan would be the extremists have hijacked the moderate pakistanis? and then as a follow-up, nobody a single politician would vote on the condemned cadre and the media? and secondly -- that's my question then, do you think that they have hijacked? the second question is, if i have a letter the pakistani

media role in all thifrs it has really become a pressure group. there some rating in the hands of righteous people and this not i am saying but the pakistani ruling coalition party member said yesterday. and so how do you see the role of media in all this, and probably i think also that the point in discussion was missing that islamists don't operate in isolation and they're not some organic creatures. who is supporting them. but my question in specific is how does pakistan relationship change it or not? just the one institution there capable of keeping the country holding it together or breaking it. thank you very much. >> i'll take the question about the media. i touched on that. i certainly think that they are playing a big role in sort of heightening the sense of political instability and crisis.

i have already talked a bit about how they are increasing more just for the drama value of it than for any sort of sinister reason to sort of give undue amount of air time to extremist view points. i think that they have learned a bit of a lesson from the killing. there was a sudden need for self-correction. you saw a lot of channels issue retractions, clarify, do shows that were much more calm, more panelists for discussion, had both sides of the story represented. so i do think that this -- there's much learning to be done there. and i do think, again, this is a situation where the government does need to fix the ordinance -- the law bordering on censorship. they need to come up with better media leg lags and enforce it. right now there is no regulation -- regulatory policy. again, that becomes an issue of political will. but i do, the other trend that i

have been researching and it's small right now, but it's one to watch, the recent femme on none is that some islamists, religious parties and extremist organizations have been reaching out and trying to connect with journalists and sort of, you know, in the effort of saying get up, get up point of view on air, trying to get to know them better and exchanging sort of sympathies in the media groups with access to breaking news and things like that, this was very small at the moment but i'm interested to see where that island to return to unquestioned about the bureaucracy. one of the things either in in doing this project and writing about it in my paper is important to make categories. pakistan is both an idea and a state. one of the trend lines we see

has been a decline of the state. the integrity of the state, bureaucracy and administrative structure and so forth. that is not true of the army. the army has grown to the point where dominates the rest of the pakistani state but we learned from many examples around the world that countries or states operate on the basis of a powerful army. what i go to factors and i say they're hopping on one from 0. there is a strategic dilemma of military leadership to build up the civilian leg of the chinese saying we would characterize it as one wag like an elephant and the other like a chopstick. that may be an exaggeration but the point is clear that the army can't do everything. it can barely do the things it is supposed to do little bundle those states and the interaction of the state which is in decline with the idea of pakistan, a

pakistani problem. if you read my paper, that is the basis of my analysis. the issue is states and bureaucracies are important. 18 or 19 different variables and factors. i'm not sure how to recommend terms of importance. religion, ethnicity, the army and so forth and a 52 external factors which you will see in iran or china. it is a difficult country to understand because it is complicated and an important country to understand because in a few years we will have thirty million pakistanis with 300 nuclear weapons--three hundred million -- maybe three hundred nuclear-weapons, 1 nuclear weapons per 1 hundred million. we have never faced a country

like this, country this large, this field in terms of development indicators with such enormous power at its command. >> what i was hoping -- what i am thinking is whether the bureaucracy is an obstacle. my feeling is we can discuss that another time. >> the answer to that is yes. there is -- >> i would like to know where our agents for change -- >> young pakistani historian looks at the trend line of the civil bureaucracy. it looks like that. the army has to think about rebuilding a civil bureaucracy that functions. >> let me ask a question from the overflow room. what do you think can be done to

engage china more to help foster stability in the region and in pakistan versus playing a spoiler role? >> we have so many problems with china i'm not sure where pakistan comes in. for us at the table or for you in the room it would come very high on the list but for the rest of the government of our country it meghan much -- may come further down with economic problems being very high on the list as well as strategic problems in the western pacific. i don't know. i hope that when we have visits or meetings between president of china and president of the united states that pakistan comes up and we express our worries about the chinese role

and how they might improve but other than that, i am frankly unaware of where when we bother to discuss pakistan in these meetings or not below the presidential level although i assume we do. other than talking to the chinese and of course we have such a wish list that the chinese are probably able to pick and choose with ease, i don't know what we do. >> i am from pakistan. my question is two problem. we have been discussing extremism in pakistan but i would take a back to this issue. we see that a lot of oppression

-- three million people in those areas, just to give support to the area to lunge, we saw a partition to support behind the abbey and the operation was successful again. conducted so that we see that -- in the society there are people who took up arms which also include other things and those that have gone -- and during the crisis from 2006 to 2010 we have been having every crisis as we mentioned but we see that in this crisis we came out strongly

and we have an independent judiciary and a vibrant media society and a parliament which is making more noise these days and politicians. so what do we see? is everything pessimistic? >> i would start by saying i think there are a number of lessons. one of them is a story of the resilience of the state. that the military does have red line but not crossed within its own borders. we don't know what those red lines are and why they were triggered in that case. was the military embarrassed by the international exposure of

what was happening, were they concerned about lines of communication being compromised, a more systemic worry about their borderlands slipping out of their control. it is hard to know. nonetheless they did show a concern and undertook some serious operation and that is worth noting. there are some other positive trends. we haven't talked about the judiciary very much. this is a fascinating thing to watch because the judiciary is a little more assertive. that is wonderful. it is an unmitigated good and it is good in a country that the judiciary has been the handmaiden of military power for long time to see some action in this regard. in pakistan, the supreme court has powers that they don't wait

for cases to move up the appellates pocket. they can live full cases out of thin air and decide they want to various people to appear before them. this can be a good thing for public accountability but it can also be a little bit strange to have the supreme court setting the agenda and holding people accountable. there are some who worry they won't take this too far. that is an institution to watch in coming years as it grows into its own skin in a new way and test the boundaries of assertiveness. >> i welcome the focus on the future of pakistan beyond the window how we think about pakistan more generally.

my question is about the data on which we base some of the pessimism or qualified optimism in pakistan's future. we talked about the role of state institutions and a little about pakistani society but i wonder if you could comment on two very important elements in thinking about the future of pakistan. one is with the brotherhood network, some of the political networks in political parties, the demographic change mentioned earlier. the second question is pakistan's middle-class. and urban middle class is clearly going to be an important variable in the future of pakistan. how much do we know about that group of people or small business than or students and if we don't know what should we be

finding out? >> we are going to see is this -- it will be further consolidated assuming civilian governments will stay on track. as we see, to take effect, stay relevant and more political environment, there will be a device, it will intensify and pay a bigger role. >> do you have anything to add?

>> it is a great question and a very hard question. we don't know very much. we have a general sense that the lower middle laugh -- lower middle-class well-off volvo right of center, historically, and development class, in the muslim world. we don't really know what it is going to mean politically, or how it will play out. many of the urban traders, more of an islamic nationalists discourse and world you. and the political landscape might be a little bit more

complicated over time. >> let me ask a question taking a long time, to what extent does nationalism from idea -- religious ideology, they're quite exercised about those in the u.s. or the u.k. do not internationalized their radicalism. very few pakistani 22 iraq in the early days. >> say things like are you pakistani first and the answer to that is many of them are

equally, the importance in many cases of islam and pakistan. increasingly the pride in being a pakistani comes from being a muslim. they have been compass -- compensated. a sense of this notion of persecution of islam and pakistan comes from the sense of being a citizen of the country that is involved. it becomes extremely demonstrated. >> i would add it is important to remember that islamist parties and other parties are not mutually exclusive. you can have other parties that are islamist like the j. you i

or parties that have a nationalist angle. it is conceivable we could see a rise in islamic discourse within parties and still have them be fundamentally patronage animals. [talking over each other] >> i did research in pakistan and i was going to stress patronage and save my question. i was going to say that in fact when we are talking about bureaucracy and judiciary and structures, process in my experience is a patronage based system. the real incentive for choice and action regardless of the institutional structure, is often paid in the relationship on a vacation pay system. very few of us seem to perceive

that react to proposals. so that is more of -- >> very interesting. >> i just want to say i agree with the speaker. the patronage system is so embedded in the culture that -- transform in its form in the sense that other new urban institutions or urban parties will remain patronage institutions. i don't see that as a big change and that is another reason we won't see much different despite the urbanization.

>> this has been hinted at, some of the comments the other panel members, one event that is likely to have an event in the next decade -- the census in 98. one of the reasons we don't have this data, what is the median age, others have confidently cited the median age. the reality is when and if the census does take place is it put pakistan on the map as a largely urban country and when the results of that census are implemented by drawing the political constituency, it will shift the balance from the countryside to this city and you

juxtapose on that the work that chris and i have done on changing recruitment factors of the pakistan military with the military having a higher organization rates. this will be a pretty major factor on how people think and it may affect the other guys and the dependencies on the landlord's by shifting and changing the political landscape. in karachi alone where you have a five million have student population they only have two representative in the assembly. out of a population of eighteen million after the census they are likely to have much more representation in the provincial assembly and national assembly. that was to affect the future of pakistani politics.

wondering if someone wants to comment on this demographic shift. >> i think you put it quite well. are almost have a counter question for you. i agree, you see a tension where they realize the census is going to change things. and i think that is increasing awareness that this will be the second-largest city in pakistan of 10 or eleven million people in a decade. they have absolutely no sense of what this will look like but my counterquestion is you mentioned the military, the urban recruitment -- what effect does that have?

better educated population, debilitated, is that something we are thinking about? >> the army has already taken pretty well educated people into its ranks. the fact that it is most likely to have in this when it recruits primarily from the cities and if we go back to the earlier works on the inner cities then you have a much more conservative group coming in to the army which means they represent the population of pakistan more accurately than they did before when it was tilted towards certain limited number. that obviously will have an effect. we don't know if it is going to be just a conservative affect like the rest of the country or whether there will be elements of radicalism creeping in and if

the economy tanks and the society falls apart and other factors start improving. those are the questions you have to keep in mind. >> this is the last question. >> i was rather surprised nobody mentioned external factors. tunisia and egypt. would you rectify that please? >> since i was the one who started off on external factors i will rectify by saying i thought this morning as i was riding in on the subway that perhaps that ought to be a part of what i end with but i can't think of exactly whether there will be an effect on tunisia and egypt or not. if there will be an economic affect if egypt as it looks like at least it might, problems in egypt drive oil prices up again which they look like they might

do, but frankly i am very skeptical that the kind of popular uprisings we have seen in to nietzsche and seemingly in egypt although i am no expert in either country are transferable to pakistan, i could be wrong, but who usually gets control of the street in pakistan? not necessarily spontaneous development of people on the streets. it is usually organized and organized by parties or in any cases islamist groups. so i don't know the answer. but it is a good question. you could answer it yourself. >> it seems to me that such a

public grassroots response requires a clear focal point. in many ways it seemed the waning days of per resolution are off's will work for that activity when there was a widespread frustration not with the army as an institution or the state as institution writ large but one person who had crossed boundaries of what was acceptable for his office. today i don't think that is the case in pakistan even though it is not exactly beloved as a leader and i would agree that the groups that have been most adept at organizing mass protests of the religious parties. they spend a lot of time working on this. they have student wings they can mobilize to the streets but even they have shown relatively

limited ability to organize very widespread grass-roots movements. >> thank you all very much. unlike to remind you that we have a short break here and we will resume the second panel at two:15. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> if we could please settle down and begin again. the future of pakistan. i'm trying my best not to operate on pakistani time. event on

important information is not the last decade focusing on afghanistan and hitting one of the think tanks in kbul and in various organizations. >> thanks to moeed yusuf and stephen cohen for organizing this event. a very ambitious event. trying to study south asia. i always try to stay out of the business of predicting the future because invariably i get it wrong. we now have an imminent panel coming up of people who can tell you the future with great certainty. i would like to introduce chris bury her many of you know already. he is assistant professor of peace and security studies in georgetown's school of service and senior fellow at the counterterrorism center at west

point. he has done extensive research on south asia focusing on afghanistan. chris has her ph.d. from chicago but more importantly is a graduate of the berkeley program. chris will be speaking on pakistan's trajectory. day-glo look at the next week in years. it is my great pleasure to introduce my colleague, led -- moeed yusuf, who has done an incredible job in the last year. he is getting a much more active focus relating to pakistan.

nearly all the credit -- democratic institution and ways to mitigate tendencies in pakistan. and working on his phd as well. and she will be speaking on pakistan's likely future. the view from capitol hill. the chief policy adviser for southeast asia and foreign relations committee. and focuses on a range of other issues like counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. yoda did his ph.d. at harvard and currently doing some teaching with some work, and

ph.d. in anthropology. tell us about the future. >> this is what they do. [talking over each other] [talking over each other] >> i have to be like this. and exporter in terrorism. numerous cleavages, significant debates about if they call themselves a muslim. there is a a lot of interesting debate going on among pakistanis and what that is going to look like. there are significant differences of opinion about who should govern the country.

should be a prime minister? should it be a president? what is the relationship between the provinces and the center. there are real issues about those parts of pakistan which are not governed by the constitution. the federally measured tribal areas, northern areas. .. >> that would be necessary to resolve some of of these foundational issues. and i think you're going to find at the end of my comments that

i'm not terribly optimistic. now, i do a lot of polling work, and what's nice about pakistan -- and you can't say this for a lot of countries -- there are a lot of fabulous statisticians in pakistan, really good firms that can do wonderful work if you structure the research questions appropriately. so i've been doing a lot of polling. it's always a learning exercise. you never do the survey that you wish you did once you got the results, and can you hope someone will keep giving you money to keep refining the process. so let me tell you a little bit about a 2009 survey that jacob shapiro and myself did. we interviewed 6,000 pakistanis, it's a genuine sample reflective of the four provinces which is very different from other polls you might encounter. obviously, it includes fatah and kashmir. pakistanis cannot get enough of saw ri ya, and i love to ask my

students in my class, what do you think sharia means? so we actually asked pakistanis who with wanted sharia, what do you think it is? and they said sharia was good golfer nance, lack of corruption, the ability to have justice served expeditiously, and when i say that, 90, 95, 98% of people answered along those dimensions. what does that sound like? people want good governance, right? 50% thought it was stoning, cutting off hands and so forth. but when people in d.c. see shah ri. >>, they freak out. there's actually a lot of people here who want the same things i do, but they're not getting it. and we see some of the militant groups have stepped into that milieu, and this is immobilizing factor although i don't like

that word because it's a shorthand, but i we see different commanders doing this and their various aors. there's a really deep division about what kind of government pakistanis want. and we were particularly interested in their views about the army. only one in five surveyed said the army should never, under no circumstances, come in, okay? one in five, only one in five held that belief. so, you know, there's actually a sizable number of pakistanis who think the army has a legitimate role in governing the state. the circumstances under which were heavily variabled within our population. pakistanis are also ambivalent about how best to deal with the internal militant threat. what i mean by ambivalent, over the years you've seen opposition to military action declining and support for peace deals declining, right? this is not to say that pakistanis have rallied around military action or that they have rejected peace deals.

what it means is that their opinions are attenuating, but there's really no clear, general consensus, and it is extremely variable across provinces which most surveys don't actually allow you to look into because the sample sizes are so small, and they're not drawn to be relevant at that level of granularity. so what we see looking across key questions about what kind of pakistan do you want, who is to be a muslim, who can call themselves a muslim, foundational issues, there are profound fissures across pakistan. now, what are some of the structural factors that might bring about some reconciliation of these issues, obviously, one of the first might be political parties. they've already been discussed at length. i think it's fair to say, and i don't want to be too charitable, that they are personality cults. they vertically integrate interests, they are horrible

aggregators of national interests, and ironically, the only quasidemocratic party in pakistan is -- [inaudible] and they're the only party that actually has a think tank that generates policy ideas nest create and -- domestically and internationally, and that's the ips. that's kind of where we are. and ian the smaller -- even the smaller parties, the ethnic parties, they're the same thing. so it's an issue of scalability, how patronage-centric they are, and how deep their patronage or how far their patronage networks go. but there's no such thing as a genuine national party that can build consensus around policy because that's not what they do. one of my favorite quotes was from a state assembly in baluchistan. she said, you know, chris, i have no interest in legislating. like, okay, moving right along. go back to that ngo you're about

to set up with american money. moving right along to cfos. i was really glad that this point was raised. those cfos that are effective are those that take no international money. why? this is a principle agent problem. those that are effective draw upon their membership, and they remain loyal to that constituency. so there is an interest in investing in ngos, but the problem is by virtue of putting our money in there, their incentives become aligned to dealing with the donor, not the people they should be serving. and i noticed my own experience working with the pakistanis, their funder was a canadian. this is how little they cared about -- [inaudible] they tasked me with translating their pamphlets into you are due, okay? that was not saying that fs it was good, okay? if a pakistani ngo only cares

about english, we obviously have a problem here. the thing that i found most interest being is when you talk to american audiences, there is oddly this assumption that csos are liberal, that they will be forces for liberality. and one of the things i've observed in pakistan is that, yes, we have the lawyers' movement, but it really didn't go anywhere. some of the shine has come off of that apple. but some of the most effective are actually not liberal at all, right? an organization that targets women, it's an islamist revival organization, i'm not going to have -- i don't know an enormous opinion on it, but i will say this, they're certainly not a force of liberality. they couch what they do in terms of feminist liberation although i know very few, you know, feminists that would recognize that kind of femmism. obviously, you've got other groups and, again, i'm not casting a normative opinion

about them. i'm simply saying they are effective csos. and one of the things that really -- this was very surprising. facebook, right? so facebook had a big drama, pakistan shut down pack stan, but did you know that -- pakistan has not done anything about one group's facebook page. so there's a selective effort to do away with some social media, but oddly enough, these liberal users of social media are more effective. a friend of mine who works with the "christian science monitor", he's routinely getting messages if you want to wage jihad on so and so, text this number. pakistanis have a much more sophisticated sense of how to use cell phones than we do, right? viral videos, think about the ways in which some of the things we've learned about have been through social media. so my point is the facebook

revolution need not go as some people might be predicting. obviously, the army has an important role to play in civil military relations. this is perhaps not the most appropriate place for this, this particular set of comments, but i personally am not convinced that kiyani is the democrat he claims to be in the sense that we might mean democrats, in the sense that he's definitely managing some really interesting as well as delicate political impasses. so rather than being politically neutral, he's actually been very -- well, you could either say effective if you think that's a role a chief of army staff should play in negotiating significant differences among politicians and between the supreme court and various politicians. on the other hand, i mean, so that's -- [inaudible] who, obviously, i respect very much. the other view is that's kind of a weird role for a chief of army staff to be playing. and that is not necessarily the

best indicator of civil/military relations going in the direction of greater civilian control. couple of summers ago there was a big brouhaha over a two-page budget sent to the senate. there's actually nothing that could have been done, and a two-page budget for, you know, two pages for defense budget? >> really give me a break. so if we go through and we were to sort of think about what are perhaps the biggest challenge for pakistan internally, it has to be the problem that pakistan relies upon groups for external utility even though it's battling some of those elements that have recon b firmed and -- reconfigured and that is attacking it internally. and, obviously, i'm talking about the pakistani taliban. let's be very clear, it's never attacked the state, it's never attacked anything within the state. lush shore is definitely the chihuahua on a leech.

i'm a dog lover, chihuahua's bite, okay? they're the ones that are on the leash. fsp, lej, they're the ones that have been somewhat in a jihadi jumble that have realigned and are are targeting the state in the west even though, you know, their nest is in the punjabi -- [inaudible] so it's going to be difficult for pakistan to put down its internal menace until it can find a way of strategically getting away from relying upon these militants. so i see there's -- in terms, and steve asked us to do this in bellagio, and i think i was there for eight hours, but i had to come home for my students' graduation. i think we can imagine really two extreme outcomes particularly with respect to what the u.s. can co. can do. and what i see currently in the u.s., i don't know, tool box is uncreative, incremental thinking

that has gotten us nowhere in the bush administration or in this administration. and by the way, i get why pakistanis are pissed at us. this is not a mystery to me. we do things that are absolutely stupid. and we do things that are offensive and morally wrong. israel, our policy towards israel, for example. so we can't get our nickers in a twist about pakistanis being mad at us until we recognize what we do. and the reality is we have supported military governments more often than not. kerry-lugar-berman is an interesting bill, but even it incentivizes some very strange things. we can talk more about that. but if we continue this status quo and we have this idea that we can keep throwing money at the army and things are going to change, we're going to come to the point of a conflict, right? i don't see any way of getting out of there with -- a, there's

no flipping data in what we do, and what we're going to find ourself very quickly in a position of is trying to contain pakistan. think about what it would take to contain pakistan. at the other extreme, and this is the extreme i'm going to advocate for even though i think it has zero possibility of actually working or even being possible, in the same way that ashley fullless envisioned a new big idea for india and pulled the bureaucracy around to get all of our institutional differences away towards a new big idea for india, we need to do this for pakistan. we need to relook at the country. we need to see pakistan as it is, not how we wish it were. and we have to deal with it on its terms. there are -- we can talk about how we can do this. i've been a fan of the civilian nuclear deal that has very similar but better conditions on

klb. we're still not even there yet. so just putting this on the table creates negotiation space that we don't have right now. so we need someone who has the sort of clarity of ashley tulles, who has the ability to have his feet in different canoes where he's got legitimacy in multiple circles and a bureaucracy that is whetted to trying to make a sensible idea a reality. that may not work, but i'm going to argue it's a lot better than thinking about containment. thank you. >> thank you. moeed. >> thanks. thanks, ann true. andrew. it's always a tough ask following chris fair. i want to give it my best shot. and i'm not going to be nearly as exciting. but let me -- i'm definitely not going to predict the future

here. what i want to do is, perhaps, chart out what pakistan's path to stability may look like. you know, we talk about instability in the general sense being that pakistan is on the precipice, so instability is to be avoided at any cost whether it's political instability, economic instability, terrorism related, etc. and what i'm going to give you a con -- is a contrary view which is i think this neat distinction we've come up with both in washington and among segments of the pakistani elite, that there is one path to stability which should look orderly, which should look calm, which should look like pakistan is progressing in the right direction. you see turbulence, chaos and a country going toward an archaic system. and my argument is that even

pakistan's path to stability -- if you project the future -- is going to be inherently turbulent and will have bouts of instability and will be uncertain for a protected period. so if benchmark that we are looking at when we see pakistan, if instability and the politicians are not getting their act together, the economy's not working, things are wrong is not the best one to apply. now, my argument, of course, is not that we should promote instability. not at all, of course. but what i'm saying is i think we immediate to distinguish between the kinds of instability that throws us and many pakistanis into hyper mode in terms of our response. let me give you three examples, concrete examples in areas which i think are critical to any country, but definitely for pakistan looking forward of course politics, economy, and then the law and order, extremism/terrorism situation. what will a stable political

dispensation look like? i think everybody agrees it has to be a consolidated democracy. but how do you get there? chris mentioned the self-centered pakistani elite. pakistan moving in a direction politically. but is it fair to expect that the path to stability is going to be a mature political response from the political elite? when they neither have the time, nor the opportunity, nor the incentive to actually yet out of their short-sighted policy making and think about national interest. if you look at pakistan's politics, i think it's squarely moving towards a model of coalitions. you're not going to have hegemonic parties. i think that's correct. more and more the ethnic and regional parties, perhaps, are going to become important which means you're going to have coalition government for some time to come. coalitional politics will then throw up the entire state of

messiness, the superficial allegiances, coalitions which break and form as they have in most other developing countries. so this will mean that pakistan will have repeated political tensions, coalition partners may be switching frequently, the opposition may be supporting the government at times and not at others, the military may be trying to still meddle in politics from behind the scenes. but, ultimately, you will have governments form and break with greater frequency than, perhaps, we would like if lens is to see political stability. now, on the face of one good argument, that's not a good thing. if our only lens is short-term stability in pakistan, i would agree. of but there is no other process -- but there is no other process apart from going through this politicking for a protected period of time which will allow these pakistani political elite to learn to coexist with each other. and perhaps at some point --

there's no guarantee this will happen -- but odds are in favor at some time they will come out with a national elite consensus on certain issues which they agree not to undermine because of political bargaining. and then these will be the issues where you will see consistency in pakistan across a period of time even if politics remains developed. so i think my argument is that politics will be turbulent if that's your benchmark. it's going to be turbulent no matter what, whether you move toward or stability or instability. but there may be a time when you have this elite consensus. and at that point you will see pakistani politics resemble politics in india. corruption habit gone -- hasn't gone away, but there are certain elements which they have agreed on and do not try to undermine every time a government changes. now, for those who -- many in washington argue with me and say, well, they're not capable. let me just say i think there

are signs this is beginning. you have the 18th amendment that is an agreement now that pakistan is going to be a more decentralized pakistan. you also have some sort of agreement that they're not going to go to the ghq and tell the military to oust the government. they're going to try and fight it out among themselves. there may also be now, i think, an agreement in some ways where you're seeing political parties realize that they need to be on the same page on certain issues. the charter of democracy was a good idea. now, these may or may not hold, but other consensus points will emerge if you allow the system to progress. but it will be tush lint -- turbulent, it will be uncertain at points. the economy is another one. and i think it's intrinsically linked to politics. now, i think josh or somebody talked about the economy, and they're not making the right decisions and monetizing their debt, etc. what else do you expect from a political elite that, again, has

not matured? they haven't had the space, they haven't had the luxury, and they simply haven't had the incentive to get out of their patronage structures. the igs debate is the best example. on the one hand, it's populist politics. they're responding to what the people of pakistan are asking them to do, no more taxes. and i completely understand what the street is saying. you're asking this country already in be trouble to impose more taxes. so from that angle it may make sense. but none of the political parties made an effort to go out and explain to their constituents that pakistan, the state of pakistan is committed to certain goals and aims with the imf which forces it to make these changes and impose these taxes. you know, the gas, gasoline subsidy is another example where they raise the prices and then pull back. but the argument, again, is let's not expect miracles. you know, it's easy to stand here and say they're not doing

this and this and this right. that's true. but they're not going to be able to do that, realistically, until they go through that process. the hit and try. through that politicking and then come out with some form of national elite consensus. and if you look at other examples, the economy is almost always part of that elite bargain that the politicians come out with. so certain elements of the economy they will, ultimately, agree on. and, again, i think there are signs. negative ones at this point. one, and i borrowed this point from josh where he mentioned this. of the elite may have decides we're not going to tax our fellow e elite. that's a negative consensus point, right? i mean there, may be also this sense we're going to live off foreign aid. we're not going to our house in many order, we're just going to keep on begging and making do. i think there are signs all parties agree we need to cut the deficit off the major public sector organizations.

i think that's happening. so, again, these political consensus points may change, but you will have to allow for this populist politics which will dismay us and many others until that consensus comes about. is there a guarantee? no. there's no guarantee. but this is the path to stability. there is no circumventing this path. going in and band-aiding a political crisis or going to the imf and saying, please, give them more law is really not what's going to cut it. two minutes. organizers' privilege? be another minute. [laughter] two more. you know, i could talk about terrorism and extremism, but i think the point should be clear. on terrorism i just mention this, just think about if pakistan goes after all the militant groups as many in pakistan and be outside are asking it. the country will seem as if it's imploding from within. for months if not a year or two before they come out on top.

if we think that -- and then punjab will happen and something else will happen and the country will remain stable, we're sadly mistaken. it's going to be a very chaotic place when pakistan actually takes those steps. so let me come, then, to the million dollar question. this is the fundamental question that i want to throw out: does pakistan have the space to go through this process? or is its special place in international politics going to deny it this luxury? because we're so microscopically focused on this country, both by the pakistani elite and people outside who are worried and concerned about pakistan and have interests. i ask this question especially because if you look at the track record, the pakistani political elite have been mastered, and the military elite have been masters at delaying everything

until there's no option. look at the s.w.a.t. operation we talked about, look at the restoration of the judges. when all other options were expended, did the ppp go for it? look at the political crisis, you know? they tried everything they could until they found out they were in a minority, and then things started pulling back. so pakistan may look like going beyond the precipice a number of times. will we still allow it the space to go through the motions and get on the other end? or is there a demand that this country's too important, we can't take this risk? this is the question we have to answer. will the pakistani military sit back and watch the politicking go on for a while? will the pakistani business elite be okay with populist economic decisions until the politicians come up to some consensus? and will washington and other countries outside the benefactors continue to support pakistan? can jonah convince people on the

hill that e we still need to continue supporting pakistan which i think we do despite the fact that the returns are not forthcoming? these are the questions which will really determine whether we keep band-aiding this sort of country to look for short-term stability, or if we allow some level of instability as long as e we realize where that is taking pakistan. of course, the distinction is tough, and there has to be a balancing act to understand what kind of instability is more critical than not. and, frankly, at this point -- and i'll end with this, andrew concern frankly, at this point i think the mindset both within pakistan and outside is one which is obsessed with keeping short-term stability intact. and not thinking beyond the two month period. you know, we may see that benefactors both within and outside end up choosing political favorites, end up meddling in whatever process

takes place. we may -- [inaudible] whether that's the most centralized policy or military dispensation, i don't know. but that's the track record. and we may want the economists to dictate policies which are in line with macroeconomic principles rather than populism. and if that's the case, i think we've got a dilemma. because here is a country which will look like stabilizing for months and then we'll say, hey, where did we go with wrong? and i think that's the question. do we give the space, our pakistanis willing to take be space -- the space, or are we going to keep going in this cycle over and over? i'll stop here. >> thank you, moeed. jonah. >> well, thanks for having me. i should note that i am speaking my private capacity. i make no claims of speaking for

the united states senate or the committee on foreign relations, and by the same toiken those bodies don't speak for me. [laughter] but as to talk -- asked to talk briefly about a couple of questions. one of them, first, is which trajectory does congress see is most likely for pakistan? i'd say congress as a whole probably envisions a medium-bad scenario. growing radicalism leading perhaps to over or cloaked military rule. there is disenchantment in congress with the ppp, there is fear of the pml, and there is a sense that the army is the only credible institution. putting on my analyst hat, i would say this is conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is only rarely wise. where does the hill want pakistan to -- pakistan/u.s. relations to end up?

i'd say the hill wants to have pakistan cut off safe havens for the haqqani network and for the taliban. the hill wants pakistan to sign on to the u.s. agenda on afghanistan, on nuclear weapons and be on counterterrorism fully. and the hill wants pakistan to ship troops from the indian border and the line of control to fatah and other areas in the west. my analysis is that all of these are probably unrealistic. so what is realistic? i'll make four points here to try to make sure i come in under ten minutes. first, we overestimate our influence. we give a lot of money. traditionally, we've given a lot more military aid than we've given nonmilitary aid we in congress have tried to address

that imbalance with kerry-lugar-berman, but even with 1.7 billion in that legislation and even with god knows how much money in military aid it's not nearly enough to determine outcomes. kerry-lugar-berman tripled nonmilitary aid but was never intended to buy anything. it was a pledge of commitment, an opportunity to pitch our case. we in congress and, certainly, in washington in general we tend to think that billions of dollars buy us outcomes. well, certainly not in a country like pakistan. and certainly not, i would venture, in any nation of 175 million. you want to buy an outcome, first, it's probably impossible, but if it were possible, you'd have to multiply the tens of billions of dollars we've given in recent years by a factor of 10 or 100 just to get into the game of buying an outcome.

the most we can do, i think, is put forward a pledge of seriousness about genuine engagement because without billions of dollars, it's all just empty rhetoric. second point, we underestimate symbolism. the drone attacks which are a core component of our policy if, in fact, they exist since i don't want to venture into classified areas, but i've read some reporting to indicate there may be some drone attacks underway in pakistan. the feeling in congress and the feeling in the administration is that these are an unmitigated good. that we're out there killing bad guys, there's very little collateral damage and anyone complaining about it is just, basically, running their mouths. i think we really ought to understand that people are not just running their mouths in pakistan, that people have some very serious issues, and they're not so much about collateral

damage as about dignity, about national sovereignty and about just the general optics of having a country come in and start killing people in your, in your nation without really acknowledging it or explaining it. we probably wouldn't feel very good about that if it were happening to us even if we fully agreed that these were people who thoroughly deserved to get killed. doesn't mean that the drone program is or is not a good thing. it does mean that we should take seriously the very real anger that this does stir up in pakistan. the way we handle little things, the issues of the moment. one of the issues of this moment, of course, is raymond davis, u.s. diplomatic official who allegedly shot and killed two pakistanis who, apparently, were trying to rob him and then another pakistani citizen apparently got killed in a vehicular manslaughter in the

same effort. now, these things happen, but for the u.s. response to be nothing to see here, move along and how dare you arrest this guy, well, once again, if this happened in washington and another country claimed diplomatic immunity not, you know, not as a final outcome, but as a starting point i think it would arouse a certain amount of anger. again, now, i'm not a lawyer. not to say this is good, this is bad. a lot of it's murky. but if we, if we want to say just move along here, there's nothing to see, i think we're being unrealistic. congress certainly is no innocent party in all of this. we contribute a fair amount to the bad symbolism that occurs. during the 1990s we in congress together with three administrations -- well, two administrations that then carried over into after the 1990s for a while -- over the

f-16 deal. the very fact that we could sell f-16s to pakistan and then not deliver them and then not give them their money back, and then charge them for the cost of warehousing the f-16s that we were neither going to give nor to refund, pakistan is still angry about this. congress certainly has not helped matters in the rhetoric that comes out of various members. i refrain from pointing the finger at the, at any particular members or at any particular chamber of congress, but shall we just say that there are no innocent parties here? third, we misunderstand islamic radicalism. story of the week is the sunni council has, apparently, has surprised a lot of people in condemning or, rather, condemning salman tossier.

praising the asas -- assassin. this has caught a lot of people by surprise, frankly, including me. these are supposed to be the so-called good with -- air quotes -- muslims. where is this all coming from? these guys are not supposed to be the taliban soul mates. well, they're not the taliban soul mates. but when we sort of try to put everybody into a convenient box, we ignore the fact that there are a lot more boxes than we recognize. the whole reaction of the pakistani public to the murder but also symmetry in a sense or lack of symmetry, i think, has taken us by surprise. the way most pakistanis see this

break out, at least the way i read it and at least, you know, back when i was looking very different than i do now, the way my neighbors then would have been reading it is not just about is it right or is it wrong to kill someone for advocating a change in the blasphemy laws but an us v. them question, you know? and who is us and who is them? cad drink is us. -- cadre is us. who are them? salman, tossier, international playboy, part of the liberal elite. we in the west, i think rightly so, as a brave defender of values that we hold and that we believe are core to pakistan's identity as envisioned by muhammad ali gin da. and i agree he was a brave man. i think his loss was a tragedy for pakistan, a tragedy for everyone who has a vision of pakistan going in a direction. but we should understand why so many pakistanis don't see it in

exactly the same terms. and is the last point i will take here is we -- make here is we misunderstand the pakistani military. we have this vision that they're bid bl. well, to a certain extent. we should understand no matter how much aid we give to the military, they will always act in accordance with their institutional interests. this shouldn't surprise us. every institutional actor acts in accordance with what it believes to be its institutional interests. there's nothing nefarious about this, nothing that should make us toss up our arms in surprise. we should accept it as a reality. and pakistani military interests or the interests of the pakistani military will never be a complete match with u.s. interests. why should they be? pakistan is a separate country from the united states. it will have separate interests, and the pakistani military will

have separate interests from those of the pakistani nation as a whole. again, there's nothing nefarious here. we should understand it, we should accept it, and we should base our policy upon this fact. that's why, in my view -- i am somewhat biased here -- but that's why in my view we should be supporting and defending kerry-lugar-berman as the president has called for us to do. it's, this is, as far as i'm aware, the only big idea in u.s./pakistan policy to come down the pike in many, many years. and it's a policy that did not come out of the administration, either this administration or last administration. it's a policy that came out of congress. it's a policy congress had to put through with very little help from anybody else. more help, i think, from the think tank community, the academic community than currently serving or previously-serving administration officials. what's the point of kerry-lugar-berman? well, the point is to try to

build up a relationship with the pakistani people, to have a long-term commitment to the relationship. and to have a nontransactional relationship. as moeed pointed out, we can't demand results on a quarterly basis. we're not going to get them, and we shouldn't expect that we're going to get them. it's going to be tough to defend this in the current budgetary environment, but as recent events in a few countries not too terribly distant from pakistan in the past week have shown, placing all our bets on military strongmen while ignoring the voices and the angers of the populations of those countries is really not a recipe for long-term stability, and it's probably not in the interests of the united states. [applause] >> thank you very much, chris, moeed, and jonah for some really

insightful, i think, remarks, interesting, provocative, and i'm hoping it will stimulate some rich discussion and debate from all of you. i don't have much to add to that. i just wanted to make a couple observations and, actually, they're probably more questions than observations. i've not been doing research recently in pakistan, and i think it is very important that some of our views and policies are informed by, actually, more empirical data because too much, too often, i think -- especially in this town -- our policies are based much more on pundit ri. of so i'll try not to engage in too much of that. one of the things that came up in the earlier discussion and was touched on, also, by chris which i just want to make a couple remarks on is back to the issue of patronage and patronage politics because i think that is really critical in understanding, for me, certainly how politics has worked in the past and, potentially, tell us how it's going to work in the

future. i think josh touched on this as well. i did my research on politics back in the punjab in the '90s and came away with the conclusion that the number one determine may not of voter perception was who's going to win. it's about patronage. it's not about a lot of the other ideological factors primarily that are talked about but, again, if you're the ppp and the military kicks you out, why waste your vote? vote for the muslim league. i remember chris cited her example of the parliamentarian from baluchistan, i can cite the example of a fairly senior unnamed official from the punjab telling me about his constituency. of look, people elect me to be a lawbreaker, not to be a lawmaker. when my brother commits murder, i can get him out of jail. when my constituent flunks his exam, i can get him a government job. when someone wants a promotion out of order, i can do that.

they want me to beat the system, not to defend the system and certainly not the -- to legislate. and i suspect that it's similar today. and that leads me, i guess, to my question is and maybe this is a bit to chris in terms of some of these foundational issues, and i guess also to some of moeed's comments about the need for a period of instability, we need to give the luxury of that space. on one level i'm sympathetic with the argument, but i don't see quite where it ends because the current patronage-based system, of course, by definition the rewards are how to maintain the status quo because those in power are doing pretty well. the incentive structure for the military would possibly be insecurity. they get richly rewarded for insecurity in the pakistan. god forbid that some of the security problems be resolved, then what would their purpose be? and so i think that's an important incentive structure

for the military. and for politicians as well. why change what's working pretty well? i mean, it doesn't work for the citizens, it doesn't work for the u.s., but it's actually working pretty well for the political e elite in power. so i guess is there any ability to actually address some of these foundational issues that chris talked about when, actually, the system is working very efficiently and very well for those who are running it today? and something else that didn't really come up, it came up again in the earlier session, it's actually talked about in moeed's paper which is part of the bellagio series which is a bit more the issue about youth, about the futuregen ration. and i guess this is where i have questions, not answers. lots of opinion polling there about youth attitudes. but also one of the things that came out quite clear in some of that polling was how youth are very interested in politics, they avidly watch the news but they don't want to engage in it.

they're not -- their disillusioned by politics and disengaged in politics. and so in some ways, i guess, do youth attitudes and opinions matter much, or is it just elite youth attitudes? i guess i'm sort of wondering what is the new generation of politicians? where are they going to emerge from? are they simply going to be the children of today's politicians? we certainly see that as a pattern in the past in which case it'd be really interesting to have more knowledge about what are the differences generationally between the political elite, between the fathers and now the sons and daughters who are replacing them in the provincial assemblies and now increasingly in the national assembly? but, again, who will be the new political class, what are their views? i don't think we have much knowledge on that. i think i'll leave it at that. i think just conclude -- to come back to jonah's final point on the big idea being around kerry-lugar, and i think that i am supportive of that initiative. however, i am, i'm worried if

money is a big enough idea. in pakistan. because i think the carrots we generally have to offer are carrots of the military and development aid. but the real issues, i think, that certainly make the u.s. unpopular in pakistan are not because we don't give them enough money. i think it's political issues and are there any big ideas that are more political in nature that could be explored because i don't think there's enough money, certainly, in the current economic climate to buy the hearts and minds of pakistan and somehow, you know, have a major political impact there. that said, i do think that money can have a very powerful development impact, and if it's used sensibly to promote development objectives, i think there could be very good development outcomes from that. however, if it's used very much with the short-term stabilization objectives, i think chances are we're going to use that pretty ineffectively to

achieve either development objectives or political objectives. so anyway, i'll leave it at that, but maybe some of these questions are for you on the panel to comment on, and then we'll open it up for questions from the audience. thank you. >> just go down the line? on the patronage issue, actually, i'm more along the thinking of you. patronage is actually a very efficient way of signaling in a low-information environment where folks tend to be illiterate. there's actually a lot of study that the world bank and others have done, so what this essentially translates to is people care more that you can get their kid into school rather than the quality of education improves. so it's really about what your relationship with that person can do for you rather than some global sense of better policy. so i think that's going to be very difficult to do without foundational human development investments. and another example of this is

corruption. pakistanis will, you know, whine and holler about how corruption is imposed upon them. and i get really irritated with this nonsense because it's like, okay, dude, you could take the chi land and pay the flipping fine, or you can try to bribe the police officer. you can either wait forever to get your phone, or you can bribe the dude to get your phone line put in. anyone who has the means will do that. so, in fact, corruption's a very efficient way of allocating services for those who can afford it. and those that can't do it really don't have much of a say anyway. so, unfortunately, civic education has been gone from pakistan, and it's been replaced with this bizarre interpretation of islam and pakistan studies which is a combination of myth and fiasco. so until you fundamentally deal with this, this human capital issue, i don't know how you're going to get out of patronage. i wanted to pick up what you said on kerry-lugar-berman. i agree with you that money is

not a big idea. pakistan has a sense of entitlement to our money. if you ask pakistani military folk, they'll tell you they're not being paid enough for their sacrifices, okay? so money is a bottomless pit. we have to stop thinking of money as a carrot. we really need to think creatively about political carrots while pushing those through. and on a second order, if we're going to think that pakistanis want a nontransactional relationship with us, we need to think again. we've offered a wedding band time and time again, status of forces agreement. all of our favorite allies have sofas. when we put a sofa on the table, they've weaseled out of it, they link it to ma sara. that is a quote from dr. l mizari, excuse me, musings on the issue. we, jonah, have to be a lot better about not rehearsing silly fictions. this f-16 is a fiction. we all know the press man that

was away while we found a way of arming them, and via understood full well what was going to happen with pressler. so pakistanis were part of getting that pressler amendment through. so we need to stop, oh, boohoo, boohoo, we really screwed you on the f-16s. i'm sorry, pakistan made the right choice. they made the choice between nuclear weapons and a bunch of aircraft. we need to stop indulging this fiction-making. the response should not be, the response should not be cut off the drone program. the response should be, hey, listen, isi, who has the media on their payroll who plant these bogus stories when there's no effort whatsoever to independently corroborate the stories of the 120-odd women and children -- it's always women and children that get killed with the drones. the story should be, dude, we're paying you a lot of cash. the strategy should be not eliminating the one program, but greater transparency. the fact that pakistanis are providing intelligence, the fact

that they are very much a part of this process and, oh, by the way, do you really want mehsud back on your streets? really? >> do you really want that? so as part of getting our relationship right with pakistan, we have to stop rehearsing these fictions because they simply become ossified and it becomes very difficult to have this people-to-people relationship we've been talking about. >> i told you it's very difficult to follow chris fair. [laughter] and yet i shall give it another shot. [laughter] i was going to answer andrew's -- >> difficult it will be for me. [laughter] >> i'll leave you to take care of that, although i think you're being a bit unfair. i think jonah very clearly said this is only a big idea as much as we put it on the table. but let me, let me just say one thing about this transparency, chris. while i completely agree and i've put it in writing many times, i shudder to think what will happen if pakistanis actually make all dealings transparent, both for washington and for islamabad. so let's be careful for what we

wish for. [laughter] let me answer andrew's point about patronage. i don't disagree with either of you. patronage is working perfectly well for the elite who are actually substantiating this throughout. the point is when you reach an elite consensus, you don't necessarily make everything correct in the political spectrum. you may still have your patronage, these murderers getting out, but on the issues which actually matter at the macro level, you may still come out with a con ken us. -- consensus. and the best example i can give you is india. i don't think corruption is has disappeared, murderers are getting out, but you have a common understanding amongst the elite of what it means to be indian. and that may come about while you continue all the mess at the bottom. and let me say i think there's some very interesting things happening in the pakistani parliament. if you really sit and see what kind of legislation has been brought in, i think the last two

and a half years have been better than the previous 60 combined. and so while at the micro level i think you're right, i think there are changes taking place, and the parliament is realizing that they have a role more to just sit there and stamp what the military says. whether that will continue or not, i don't know. but i think there are trends we should look at. on the youth, very quickly, i think there's not enough data. there's no evidence coming out, but -- new evidence coming out, but if we talk about the future of pakistan, that's the future. so if we're going to continue learning about -- [inaudible] ten years down the line we'll figure out that we've had a problem again. >> might be belawa. >> thanks. well, i'll talk about klb in a moment. first, chris, i think you may be responding to statements i didn't actually make. i never said we should cut off the drone program. >> request i'm not talking about

you. >> okay. [laughter] >> i didn't say you did. i'm talking about the f-16 crap. >> okay. of f-16th. it is a fact that we neither gave the f-16s nor refunded the money -- >> it is a fact they knew the law. >> the law did not say we're not bicycle to give you the plains -- give you the plane organization the money. what has gotten under the skin of a lot of pakistanis is the fact that we wouldn't give the planes, we wouldn't give the money, and we charged them for warehousing planes that we refused to deliver. now, i don't want to get into an entire separate tangent on this. i merely want to point out it's a fact that this makes pakistanis very angry, and we've got to base our policy on real anger as it really exists. you can say it shouldn't exist, that's fine. but, you know, we can't just sort of fiat away the anger that is there. on klb, well, again, it's not as if point of klb is giving money

and expecting we're buying something. klb has never expected to be birthday cake. it wasn't expected to be we're going to give you $7.5 billion, and now we are your sugar daddy. as i said and as i said from day one in this, this merely gets us into the game. this merely is a pledge of sincerity. when i was first tasked by then-senator biden after years of my telling him, look, you know, boss, the current policy towards pakistan needs a new big idea, and the administration ain't doing it, and he said, okay, smart guy, come up with something. i tried and tried and tried to come up with something that did not involve money because -- [laughter] because every -- if you think there is something more difficult than going to a u.s. senator and saying, hey, boss, i want you to take billions of dollars from your constituents and send them to people who hate

you, and then i want you to convince 534 of your colleagues to do exactly the same thing. that's not exactly a task i really wanted to sign up for. so i tried to find some way, some big idea that did not involve money. i couldn't do it. if someone else has a big idea that does not involve money, come on, lay it on me. [laughter] yeah. that would be nice. but what klb does is it gets us a seat at the table. it is not simply a perpetuation of the past policy because the past policy was all about buying off the pakistani military. this is about establishing a relationship with the pakistani people. and to give you an example of what it was trying to do, here's a success that, i think, probably we all would say was really one of the few unabashed successes in u.s./pakistani policy. our response to the kashmir earthquake. terrible, terrible tragedy, and

how did we respond? we spent a billion dollars, but it wasn't by cutting a check, it wasn't here, here you go. it was sending chinooks, it was sending u.s. service members. and the fact of seeing u.s. troops saving the lives of pakistani people, that lent more than the billion dollar price tag. so when i was trying to come up with a formulation for what was then biden-lugar, i was saying how do we replicate this effect on an ongoing basis? do we have to wait for a natural disaster, or can we do this as a matter of policy? and to end on a slightly more flippant but appropriate note, chris, you asked for a wedding ring. i actually quite literally delivered it. in the course of a fly along on a chinook over the, over the course -- i was flying along with a chinook helping in a small way the sergeant who was

operating the winch open and shut the hatch each time that we were delivering grain. very, very cold, and each time i'd put on my gloves, take them off. after a morning of doing that, i was rushing off to meet then-senator kerry not as chairman, but as a middle-ranking member of the committee, and i looked down at my hands -- hand and saw there was no ring there. so, of course, if i had to choose between upsetting my home boss and someone who at that time was not even my boss at all, it was a pretty easy choice. we scoured the chinook to try and find the wedding ring, and it was nowhere there. and i realized the only possible way this could have happened is at one point it went out my glove and out the bottom hatch of the chinook, and somewhere in kashmir -- [laughter] a citizen was bending down for his morning prayers and mouse of

the sky -- out of the sky there came a small band of gold courtesy of the united states. [laughter] >> can thank you very much, jonah. we're going to open it up, anyone who has questions on the floor, please, come to one of the microphones, and i'm going to start with a couple of people sitting in our overflow room. the first question is directed to moeed which is in a decentralized pakistan, how do you see the future of baluchistan and the issue of the controversial line between pakistan and afghanistan? and then a second question was, which is more critical for pakistan's future, internal politics or actions of its neighbors? >> i think we'll take two more questions and let you respond, then go back to some more questions. over on the left. >> i'm harlan oman, i'd like to congratulate the panel for really a very, very good presentation. an observation first.